Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 6, No. 0328. Thursday, 20 April 1995.
(1) From: Edward Rocklin <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Wednesday, 19 Apr 95 17:42:55 PDT
Subj: RE: SHK 6.0320 Insults and Apologies
(2) From: W. L. Godshalk <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Wednesday, 19 Apr 1995 22:55:26 -0500 (EST)
Subj: Re: SHK 6.0317 Qs: Troilus and Cressida
(3) From: Juliet A. Youngren <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Thursday, 20 Apr 1995 10:21:33 -0500 (CDT)
Subj: Don John
(4) From: Mather Susan <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Thursday, 20 Apr 1995 17:15:20 -0400 (EDT)
Subj: Re: SHK 6.0302 Q: Stratford Festivals and Teaching
(5) From: Marty Hyatt <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Wednesday, 19 Apr 1995 15:13:28 -0400 (EDT)
Subj: humanities.literature.english.shakespeare
(1)----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: Edward Rocklin <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Wednesday, 19 Apr 95 17:42:55 PDT
Subject: 6.0320 Insults and Apologies
Comment: RE: SHK 6.0320 Insults and Apologies
Loved the connection with Richard III and our more local and less self-
conscious buffoons. "I thank my God for my humility" has always seemed to me
to be not only hilarious but also perfect in what it does and in defining the
set of attributes that can never be self-proclaimed.
Thanks again
Edward Rocklin
(2)----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: W. L. Godshalk <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Wednesday, 19 Apr 1995 22:55:26 -0500 (EST)
Subject: 6.0317 Qs: Troilus and Cressida
Comment: Re: SHK 6.0317 Qs: Troilus and Cressida
I think Chris Stroffolino may be interested in Harold Brooks, "TROILUS AND
CRESSIDA: Its Dramatic Unity and Genre," in "Fanned and Winnowed Opinions":
Shakespearean Essays Presented to Harold Jenkins, ed. John Mahon and Thomas
Pendleton (London: Methuen, and I don't have the date) 6-25. This is a good
general essay that does deal with the doubleness in the play and, God bless the
mark! with characters. (Angels and ministers of grace defend us!)
Yours, Bill Godshalk
(3)----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: Juliet A. Youngren <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Thursday, 20 Apr 1995 10:21:33 -0500 (CDT)
Subject: Don John
Given Don John's quote about Claudio ("He hath all the glory of my overthrow")
coupled with the idea, noted in the discussion of _Macbeth_, that when one guy
screws up someone else gets his job--it seems to me one could postulate that
Claudio had been instrumental in squashing Don John's failed rebellion. Either
he exposed it to Don Pedro, or he played a more active role in suppressing it.
Then Pedro goes and forgives John, so he is not only defeated but humiliated,
and he could be blaming all that on Claudio. It would give him a powerful
motive for revenge.
Juliet Youngren
(4)----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: Mather Susan <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Thursday, 20 Apr 1995 17:15:20 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: 6.0302 Q: Stratford Festivals and Teaching
Comment: Re: SHK 6.0302 Q: Stratford Festivals and Teaching
Dear Bill Dynes,
I'm not sure what insight I can give you but, I have attended two classes at
Kent State University with Dr. Wagner, who I believe can be
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. could be mistaken. Being a Shakespeare
professor, he might be part of listserv. But anyway, our class had to read the
plays that we were attending at the Festival and respond to them in journal
entries before we went to the performances. We then had to meet in a group
before each performance and discuss things like--"How do you think the director
will stage the scene where Cleopatra has Antony lifted up to her, without
making it comical?" We also attended "Talking Theatre" and had interviews with
then, "Cleopatra", Goldie Semple and "Antony", Leon Pownall (I think that's his
last name). These were set up by Lisa Brudy, an educational correspondent that
Dr. Wagner knew. She can be reached I believe at the Festival theatre. After
the performances, we were to write another journal entry and eventually, we
were expected to write an essay on some aspect of the experience. When I wrote
my essay on A Midsummer Night's Dream and Measure for Measure, for instance, I
worked in how the director staged the women's roles--hence, a feminist
approach. I really think that it is important to incorporate sometimes what it
is either what the director is thinking when s/he directs a play or what you as
the viewer thought when you finally saw the play. I hope this was helpful--I
can find out the number for Lisa Brudy if you need it--or you can reach Dr.
Wagner by telephone at Kent Stark--1(216)499-9600 or 1(216)535-3377.
Have a good time at Stratford, I wish I could join you but, I'm just a poor,
grad. student,
Susan Mather
[You might also wish to read Richard Paul Knowles's piece on the 1993 season
in SQ 45.2: 211-225. --HMC]
(5)----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: Marty Hyatt <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Wednesday, 19 Apr 1995 15:13:28 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: humanities.literature.english.shakespeare
I recently forwarded to this list a proposal for a Shakespeare Usenet newsgroup
(humanities.literature.english.shakespeare).
It has been brought to my attention that the section in the Request For
Discussion dealing with the shaksper list might be misconstrued. Hardy Cook is
to be applauded for his work in maintaining this list. My only intent was to
indicate why the new Usenet newsgroup should be unmoderated, not to comment on
the moderation of the shaksper list.
And just to calm any possible fears: there are NO plans to gate the new group
to the shaksper list. Just another place on the "net" to discuss Shakespeare,
that's all. It is expected that a proposal for a new Usenet group should be
cross-posted to mailing lists on the same or very similar topics as a matter of
information and courtesy. Some of the people here (like me) will want to look
in on the newsgroup, so we might have some thoughts about where to place the
group (for example, in the rec.arts.books.* hierarchy vs the new humanities.*
hierarchy).
Martin B. Hyatt (Marty) This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Duquesne University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania USA

Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 6, No. 0326. Thursday, 20 April 1995.
(1) From: Moray McConnachie <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Thursday, 20 Apr 1995 00:04:51 +0100
Subj: RE: SHK 6.0316 Re: Ideology and Subjectivity
(2) From: Gail Burns <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Wednesday, 19 Apr 1995 21:13:14 -0400
Subj: Re: SHK 6.0316 Re: Ideology a...
(3) From: Thomas G. Bishop <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Thursday, 20 Apr 1995 12:58:45 -0400
Subj: Re: SHK 6.0316 Re: Ideology and Subjectivity
(4) From: Eddie Duggan <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Thursday, 20 Apr 95 22:01:15 BST
Subj: Re: SHK 6.0316 Re: 'Early Modern'
(1)----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: Moray McConnachie <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Thursday, 20 Apr 1995 00:04:51 +0100
Subject: 6.0316 Re: Ideology and Subjectivity
Comment: RE: SHK 6.0316 Re: Ideology and Subjectivity
While I agree with much of what Bill Godshalk has said (and hence lay my life
on the line, judging by the way that this thread has developed), I must
question this remark:
> (1) THE COMEDY OF ERRORS has nothing to do with "subjectivity" which is
> a 19th century concept initiated by Southey and Coleridge. To speak of
> subjectivity in the late 16th century is historically incorrect.
I am, I think, as near a perceiver of scholarship as recovery as there can be.
But we must use the concepts that mean something to us, now (which is who we
are writing for) to describe what we have recovered. If we choose to label
something, be it THE COMEDY OF ERRORS, or anything else, in this period as
being (and dealing with) what we now call "subjectivity," then that must remain
licit. It will always be true that the boundaries of our definitions will be
different from those of the men and women we study. Language changes whether
the mind does or not.
Besides, if I read Bill right, the operations of the mind allegedly remain
constant across the centuries: and therefore (if we experience a sensation of
it, or believe in it as a mode or mental operation) subjectivity existed also
throughout the years? On that point I must and will remain agnostic for many
years.
Moray McConnachie
(2)----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: Gail Burns <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Wednesday, 19 Apr 1995 21:13:14 -0400
Subject: 6.0316 Re: Ideology a...
Comment: Re: SHK 6.0316 Re: Ideology a...
I am sorry, I am not an academic. I am a humble reader of great writers. And I
am a humble writer of not-great prose, fiction and drama. But, in both guises,
I have always been DEEPLY offended when asked by a teacher to write a paper
explaining what Shakespeare/Chaucer/Jane Austen/Charles Dickens/ANYONE meant by
what they wrote!!! I am not those illustrious authors, nor do I pretend to be
them or even be in the same class with them. Other than explaining in modern
English what they rendered in the English of their day, how do I know what they
meant??? I am not they. I am not even a contemporary to judge what their
contemporaries thought they meant. I am one SUBJECTIVE human being of the late
20th century, and that is the only way I can respond to anything I see or hear
or read!
I write this as a practicing journalist. People compliment me on my
objectivity and say they rely on what I write to tell them "what really
happened". And I tell them that even if I quote people accurately and don't
insert my own opinion, my retelling of what went on at a given time and place
is just as subjective as another reporter's.
I suppose this is why I am not an academic, but I strongly believe that
Shakespeare (whoever that bloke or bloke-ette was) is the only one who knows
what s/he meant when s/he wrote a given work, and even then it was only what it
meant to her/him - and not to you or me!
Gail Burns
This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
(3)----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: Thomas G. Bishop <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Thursday, 20 Apr 1995 12:58:45 -0400
Subject: 6.0316 Re: Ideology and Subjectivity
Comment: Re: SHK 6.0316 Re: Ideology and Subjectivity
A quotation I came across this morning seems particularly germane to the
discussion here. It's from Adorno:
"Activity is not, as ideology teaches, merely the purposive life of autonomous
people, but also the vain commotion of their unfreedom."
This is a paraphrase of a famous remark of Marx, of course, but the pointedness
of its "not merely...but also" seems to me to avoid certain traps.
To set about applying these questions to Shakespearean scenes, I can think of
two possibly relevant parables.
1) Gloucester on the clifftop sees himself as articulating (finally) an image
of the dignity and resonance of his fate, one sufficiently powerful that the
gods themselves are taken to be looking at it. That it involves an act of
surrender into the hands of giant forces (troped by gravity) does not prevent
our seeing it as an imaginatively capable gesture which communicates a powerful
conception of self-possession. At the same time, of course, that gesture is
undermined by Edgar's "therapeutic" stratagem, which has the (unintended?)
side-effect of turning Gloucester's perception of himself as tragic into a
vulgar error and his grand demise into a mere pratfall. Whose vision wins out
here -- the power of Gloucester's desire for dignity or the pathos of Edgar's
attempt to rehabilitate him (at what cost and for what covert satisfactions?).
Edgar's description of the cliff itself, intended to deceive, has the
unintended side-effect, at least for me, of making the clarity of Gloucester's
conception that much more vivid and moving.
2) Cleopatra's description of Antony to Dolabella. Perhaps Bill Godshalk's
championing of autonomy is one of the "dreams of boys and women" (and thank you
yes, I am fully aware of the ironies of that assertion, but let that go) which
serious Roman minds like John Drakakis' here are inclined to laugh at, if not
rage against. Though the lines are difficult, it's fairly clear to me that
Cleopatra ends up championing the power of conceptions of freedom and
magnanimity to remake the world, even in a state of captivity to determinist
Caesar ("Do not exceed the prescripts of this scroll"). And though it's a small
concession, it turns out to be crucial that Dolabella is persuaded apparently
by this speech to betray Caesar's intentions, allowing her at least the liberty
(she calls it that) of choosing not to submit, of arranging her own death in
order to "win a place in the story". That her choice is deadly is important,
but the terms of that death are hers to select. Caesar's is the history play,
with all its steamrollering, but Cleopatra's insistence on autonomy and the
value and truth of her picture of freedom is not merely empty.
No doubt these scenes can be reread in other ways. But I dont have a problem
with that. Allez-y, les gars!
Tom Bishop
(4)----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: Eddie Duggan <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Thursday, 20 Apr 95 22:01:15 BST
Subject: 6.0316 Re: 'Early Modern'
Comment: Re: SHK 6.0316 Re: 'Early Modern'
Terry Hawkes wonders why we use the phrase 'early modern'.
Might I suggest two possible reasons:
First, the phrase forms part of the title of Peter Burke's _Popular Culture in
Early Modern Europe_
Secondly, I believe the phrase has some currency in the popular and rather
influential _Open University_ series of H/E study courses and accompanying
television programmes (well, something has to keep me up at night).
Eddie Duggan

Shakespeare Electronic Conference, Vol. 6, No. 0327. Thursday, 20 April 1995.
(1) From: Scott Shepherd <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Thursday, 20 Apr 1995 10:38:48 -0400
Subj: *Mac* discussions
(2) From: Scott Shepherd <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Thursday, 20 Apr 1995 10:38:55 -0400
Subj: *Mac.* discussions
(1)----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: Scott Shepherd <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Thursday, 20 Apr 1995 10:38:48 -0400
Subject: *Mac* discussions
SERGEANT
No sooner justice had, with valor arm'd,
Compell'd these skipping kerns to trust their heels,
But the Norweyan lord, surveying vantage,
With furbish'd arms and new supplies of men
Began a fresh assault.
DUNCAN Dismay'd not this
Our captains Macbeth and Banquo?
SERGEANT Yes,
As sparrows eagles or the hare the lion.
If I say sooth I must report they were
As cannons overcharg'd with double cracks,
So they doubly redoubled strokes upon the foe.
Doesn't sound to me like two skirmishes on opposite sides of the country. Where
did that idea come from anyway?
If the above isn't enough to put Macbeth in both battles, here's Ross:
The king hath happily receiv'd Macbeth
The news of thy success, and when he reads
Thy personal venture in the rebels' fight
His wonders and his praises do contend
Which should be thine or his. Silenc'd with that,
In viewing o'er the rest o' th' selfsame day
He finds thee in the stout Norweyan ranks...
Any attempt to equate Bellona's bridegroom with Macduff is a rewrite theory. We
all admit that, right?
Is something missing in the development of Macduff? Why are we looking for more
of him in act one? Lots of avengers have to wait for their big scenes. Look at
Richmond in *R3*. Look at Antony in *JC*. Look at Laertes. They can't emerge
until the configuration of events calls for them. (cf Tolstoy's conception of
history in *War and Peace*) "Hero" is an opportunity afforded to Macduff by the
assassination of Duncan, and he can't announce his candidacy before the
position opens up.
Dom Saliani wants to establish Macduff as "a worthy adversary" in act one, but
that's an unshakespearean dramatic concern. I feel the same way about Bill
Godshalk's scenario where Macduff resents Macbeth after being passed over for
thane of Cawdor. The idea that Macduff would expect that appointment has no
existence in the play. It might have been there before, but there's still no
good reason to think so.
Bellona's bridegroom seems to be a sticking point, because an epithet is used
instead of a name. But the whole project of 1.2 is to glorify Macbeth! By the
time Ross says "Bellona's bridegroom" everybody knows who the man of the day
is.
If you cut from
> Or memorize another Golgotha,
> I cannot tell
to
> Norway himself with terrible numbers,
making one long battle report, could we still doubt the identity of the
bridegroom?
The sergeant's speech is followed by the story from Ross the same way one
paragraph follows another in a monologue. One messenger collapses and another
takes up where he left off, continuing in the same bloated epic style (which is
the reason for epithets in the first place).
(2)----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: Scott Shepherd <This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.>
Date: Thursday, 20 Apr 1995 10:38:55 -0400
Subject: *Mac.* discussions
I wish I had an OED here. My old Webster's has this for "rebellious":
> 2. resisting treatment or management.
You can be rebellious against anything, not just a political state. For example,
> ...His antique sword,
> Rebellious to his arm, lies where it falls,
> Repugnant to command. [Hamlet 2.2.469-471]
So I think Norway (or Macbeth) can have a rebellious arm even if he's not a
rebel.
But Don Foster's main point about identity confusion as a device or pattern in
*Macbeth* is right on the money.